A Lake Pepin 2015 tour report

I hitched a ride from Minneapolis on Friday afternoon, courtesy of Paul’s mom. (Thanks!) I killed a few hours checking out the town, getting some new stoneware along with chowing on some excellent pizza and drinking fine beer from Red Wing Brewery. (My favorite: The Remmler’s Royal Brew, a recreation of a Red Wing brewed pre-prohibition lager. Lagers back then tasted good!) The pre-ride meetup was at the Staghead, and I ran into some familiar faces that I saw last year. My riding partners for the post-Pepin tour, Chris aka Pondero and Steven aka GravelDoc, showed up from their long drive northward from Texas.* We all chatted, had a few beers, and went to our respective crash spaces to get a good night’s rest before the festivities.

Saturday morning was warm but cloudy. The forecast for the weekend was not good, and seemed to get worse with each new update:…